Sunday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Stormy Dragon says:

    An entire hour of sleep vanished… This is the worst day of the year.

  2. Mikey says:

    @Stormy Dragon: It’s the worst day of the year so far.

    8
  3. Jen says:

    I am tired–to-the-bone-exhausted–by Enormously Consequential Elections. We’re having one Tuesday in my little town, on the same day we’re scheduled to have a major nor’easter blow through, dumping somewhere between 5-8″ of snow. This means low turnout, which means anything could happen.

    I really want to return to the days when there were candidates on the ballot, some of whom I agreed with, some of whom I did not, but regardless of the outcome, the interests of the TOWN would be taken care of. These days, it’s between a sane group and a group that just wants to burn everything to the ground.

    9
  4. Stormy Dragon says:

    Darling of the “detransition” movement comes out again as transgender

    Like the ex-gay movement that rose to prominence in the early 2000s and then came crashing down as leaders recanted their “conversions,” the detransition movement is showing similar signs of a crack-up.

    6
  5. MarkedMan says:

    @Stormy Dragon: To me, this is the key sentence:

    Detrans promoters liken the urge to transition to drug or alcohol addiction, encouraging sufferers to avoid triggers and commit to abstinence, concepts adopted from 12-step programs.

    Alcohol and drug addiction causes an inability to hold a job or maintain a relationship, and eventually leads to permanent brain damage and an early death. A gender transition leads to, well, a gender transition. If you don’t want to do such a thing yourself, for whatever reason, whether it be fear or religion or wu-Wu mysticism, fine. Don’t transition. But why do you have to get all up in everyone else’s business?

    There was a discussion yesterday about whether speculating on whether anti-gay legislators were denying their own sexuality should be out of bounds, and both sides seemed to have legitimate perspectives but arguing past each other. But I suspect it is true that the loudest and most influential anti-anything are those that are repulsed by their own or their loved ones true nature, and understanding that is important.

    4
  6. Michael Reynolds says:

    In intercepted phone call, a Russian soldier confesses to horrifying torture, and to loving it.

    Not an easy listen.

    2
  7. Kathy says:

    I recently learned Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition for piano.

    The Promenade which begins the piece is one of my favorites. So, I had to find out how that sounded played on a piano, rather than by an orchestra.

    It’s incredible.

    1
  8. CSK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Jesus, who’s worse? The mother or the son?

    1
  9. Joe says:

    @Kathy: I found both the orchestral and piano pieces at roughy the same time. As I recall, Ravel arranged the orchestral version. Nice find for you.

    2
  10. Kylopod says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Alcohol and drug addiction causes an inability to hold a job or maintain a relationship, and eventually leads to permanent brain damage and an early death. A gender transition leads to, well, a gender transition.

    This is another aspect to anti-trans rhetoric that carries echoes of past (and present) anti-gay rhetoric, where homosexuality was often compared with alcholism, and gay men were accused of endangering themselves due to the threat of AIDS. It’s all the same gambit: disguise bigotry and contempt as concern for people’s welfare.

    But it’s also important to realize that a lot of this is partly a reflection of the right’s twisted outlook on issues like substance abuse and mental health, where they lean heavily into the idea that these problems all stem fundamentally from lack of willpower.

    6
  11. CSK says:

    @Kylopod:

    I think that extends to phobias that don’t involve bigotry, i.e. fear of flying, fear of driving, fear of deep water, etc. These can be life-crippling, but the impulse on the part of many is just to snap: “Oh, get over it.” If it were that easy, they would.

    1
  12. MarkedMan says:

    @Kylopod: I hadn’t really thought about this before, but your “the right’s twisted … idea that these problems all stem fundamentally from lack of willpower” comment made me realize there is a real analogy to pandemic vaccines and masking here. While it’s bigotry to blame someone’s gayness for their AIDS, it’s still a public good to get the word out that unprotected sex is risky and the more partners you have the riskier it is. And that reaching out proactively to groups that are more likely to engage in such behaviors is just good public health policy. But within such groups are people that just “don’t want to listen to all that negativity” or manage to convince themselves that it’s all a hoax driven by people who are seeking to control them. And the exact same could be said about anti-vaxers and anti-maskers.

    When someone with this type of outlook ends up ill, I am empathic with their situation but am judgmental on how they got there.

    3
  13. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Kylopod:

    This is another aspect to anti-trans rhetoric that carries echoes of past (and present) anti-gay rhetoric, where homosexuality was often compared with alcholism, and gay men were accused of endangering themselves due to the threat of AIDS. It’s all the same gambit: disguise bigotry and contempt as concern for people’s welfare.

    One thing that really bugs me is a particular segment of the LGBT+ community that seems to think that if the trans and queer parts of the community are thrown under the bus, the rest will be accepted with open arms when it’s pretty obviously a divide and conquer strategy that will immediately turn on the rest of the community if successful.

    3
  14. Mr. Prosser says:

    @Kathy: Marvelous, not what I was expecting at all.

    1
  15. Gustopher says:

    @Stormy Dragon: It’s a little odd — even though garden variety queers like myself are clearly next to be targeted, and would end up in the same death camps if these people have their way, I am so tired of thinking or hearing about trans people this or gender that. It’s like Hillary’s emails all over again.

    Granted my exhaustion is mostly of the form of telling anyone who starts up the whole “they’re shoving their woke agenda down our throats” thing to shut up and fuck off, and then asking them which part of fuck off they didn’t understand when they continue. My patience and willingness to deal with these people at all, on any subject, ever again, is basically zero.

    I stopped speaking to my brother when he started with the trans folks are groomers a while ago, and honestly it’s been refreshing to not have him around. If he needs a kidney or bone marrow or something, I’m sure he will find a way to get word to me, but otherwise… all we have in common is DNA.

    For many, many years I have had a fondness for Transformers (robots in disguise, not electrical transformers), and between the latest series have a non-binary character (a robot that does not have a clear human gender!) and the next (bound to be terrible) movie having a black protagonist and rap music*, the various online Transformers communities are filled with screaming right wingers and I can’t be bothered.

    I think I miss people taking plastic children’s toys far too seriously more than my brother.

    Anyway, I’m tired. We need to just beat right wingers with a club every time they raise their filthy little inbred heads up**. I don’t know how we find common ground to keep this country together.

    ——
    *: The next movie “Rise of the Beasts” will have Optimus Primal, a robot that transforms into an ape, along with rap music (set in the 90s, so it was either that or grunge**) and a black protagonist. It’s going to be so inadvertently racist.

    **: I have a very clear childhood memory. I had done something (maybe not that clear of a memory) and my father asked me “what is wrong with you?” My response was “bad breeding”. I hold this is probably what is wrong with my brother as well, and the various right wingers.

    ***: I would have preferred grunge. And changing Primal to a Sasquatch and setting the whole thing in the Pacific Northwest and making the story be about Primal fighting his heroin addiction along with evil robots. If they were able to license Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”, I think we even the plan of the evil robots right there, even if that is the same plan as some earlier movie.

    1
  16. EddieInCA says:

    I’m going to post repeatedly on the SVB failing over the next couple of weeks. I’m livid that the Biden administration is talking about bailing out the depositors of this effing bank.

    WTF? Seriously. Why do these Tech startups get bailed out for shitty business decisions? What the actual fuck?

    4
  17. JohnSF says:

    @EddieInCA:
    Not only that, there are clear signs some VC players are deliberately trying to cause run contagion to force a federal bailout. And there are also indications that a primary reason is because a lot of VC players had a lot of personal, as opposed to corporate, money in SVB accounts.

    1
  18. MarkedMan says:

    @EddieInCA: I’m not entirely sure that investing in long term US Treasuries falls into the “shitty decision” category, and can easily see why the administration would intervene to keep it that way. So far it sounds like SVB made pretty conservative decisions. Yes, they lobbied for relaxed oversight but I haven’t seen anyone show that ties directly to what went wrong.

    More interesting is the fact that it was a bank run. (No doubt Mr. Potter was buying during the whole thing.) Some of that might be due to the fact that most of their deposits came from startups with tranches of venture capital they needed to stash somewhere and that has dried up pretty precipitously. (To be clear, there is as yet no evidence that what I write next actually happened – it is all theoretical.) But, and here’s where it gets interesting, it also made it ripe for stock manipulation, where a significant investor could short their stock, then suddenly withdraw their funds, and then make money off the dip. If that happened and the dip turned into a run, there may be prison time for someone. I vote for Peter Thiel, just on general principals. (Again, no evidence, pure speculation.)

    2
  19. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @EddieInCA: This may be good news on that front I dunno for sure tho. Not enuf interest in banking policy.

    “Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out…and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,” Yellen told CBS.

    Anyone care to translate?

  20. charon says:

    @Gustopher:

    It’s a little odd — even though garden variety queers like myself are clearly next to be targeted, and would end up in the same death camps if these people have their way, I am so tired of thinking or hearing about trans people this or gender that. It’s like Hillary’s emails all over again.

    Steel yourself because, sadly, garden variety assholes like Ron DeSantis and Bari Weiss expect great benefits from yakking about this during the next year or two of electoral season. Very unpopular people to pick on without much blowback, and both politically and culturally fraught.

    That’s my interpretation of why we are seeing so much recent discussion of this.

    And, just like a pack of hyenas picking the weakest wildebeest to single out, they are coming first for the trans, just like the Niemoller quote.

    2
  21. JohnSF says:

    @MarkedMan:

    I’m not entirely sure that investing in long term US Treasuries falls into the “shitty decision” category

    It is if they are long dated fixed rate bonds and interest rates are rising. Because that means the bond value falls, and you need to sell at a loss if need to cover withdrawals.
    And your other main investment category is US tech stocks, which have taken a pummeling as well.
    And if those losses get big enough, and scare big depositors: classic bank run.
    And, for some currently murky reason, SVB and its depositors appear to have deliberately forgone deposit insurance coverage.
    Ooops.

  22. charon says:

    @JohnSF:

    You can’t get deposit insurance on massive balances, limit is $250,000. Companies were keeping massive checking account balances that their payroll software could handle, also other reasons. Lots of tech companies such as Roku getting hurt, Peter Thiel beat the rush, got his money out early.

  23. Gustopher says:

    @JohnSF: Those are shitty decisions of the bankers, not the depositors.

    The FDIC is liquidating SVB’s assets, so we should have a good idea of how much of a shortfall there will be, and presumably how the assets will be paid out (do they cover the first 250k, and then a straight proportion above? Is it a more complicated formula?).

    Given that wiping out the corporate accounts is going to be wiping out jobs, I’d want to know how much that shortfall is and what the consequences are before ruling out a bailout.

  24. JohnSF says:

    @charon:
    I thought the usual practice was to use insured cash sweep schemes, breaking up deposits over 250k limit into smaller insured parts, up to ceiling of $150m.
    I may be mistaken, finance is not my field.
    I assume that using them comes with costs.
    I’m now coming across reports that SVB had the capability to set up ICS but didn’t use it.
    Also that VC’s who were getting massive personal perks (low interest mortgages etc) in exchange for getting firms they funded to use SVB. These companies kept all their cash at SVB, and were required to under the terms of the loans from SVB that the VC’s arranged.
    Something smells worse then a week old cheese coated kipper jammed behind a radiator.

    2
  25. Gustopher says:

    @charon:

    Steel yourself…

    That’s part of the problem right there. I feel a hardness forming in myself that I do not like. A harshness the the Buddha would have cautioned against, and which is generally just unpleasant and unattractive.

    Granted, it’s a hardness and harshness against TERFs and Nazis, so it’s probably the best of all possible cases of judgmentalness, but I don’t like it.

    1
  26. Thomm says:

    @JohnSF: you are entirety correct. Their customers were too busy, “moving fast and being disruptive” to do that I guess. One of the reasons the head of accounts at all the dealers I have worked for are comptrollers; they are supposed to be on top of such things. Also, as an f&i manager, if I offered someone a lower rate for referrals or to buy back-end products (service contracts, gap insurance, etc), I would lose my sales licence and possibly be up on criminal charges. I have limited sympathy for these business owners that did not do proper risk assessment in setting up their accounts. They should be pulling out the personal checkbook and paying their people what is owed them if payroll is missed due to their negligence in setting up accounts.

    2
  27. Kathy says:

    @Mr. Prosser:

    I know, right? She plays it at a slower tempo, I think. The Promenade parts, especially the first, kind of have an ethereal quality to them.